Jamie Foxx Wants To Play Spawn. Is He The Mystery Oscar Winner Todd McFarlane Has Been Talking About?

Jamie Foxx was among the massive star studded list of guests at Comic-Con last week. The Academy Award winning actor sat down with Movies.com at Comic-Con last week to talk up many things, but specifically his role as the villain Electro in the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

However when asked about other roles he was eager to tackle, he revealed another comic book icon was on his short list.

“Spawn is one, yeah,” he said. “And Mike Tyson. Those are two roles I would just love to do. I’m aggressively pursuing them.”

Besides the general possibilities involved now that Foxx has fessed up to his extreme interest in playing the anti-hero, his revelation also lines up with what Image Comics co-founder and Spawn creator Todd McFarlane has been saying in regards to casting the lead in the long time in-the-works big screen reboot for the popular character.

I caught up with McFarlane at the 2012 Toy Fair, and at that time he told me in vague terms some of the things going on with the film’s progress, which in present context seem to fit Foxx’s interest to a tee.

“An Academy Award winning actor came out to the office and wants to be in it,” McFarlane told me last year. “He bugs me every week to get the script done cause he had an idea, and I told him my idea. He said ‘Fine, I love your idea. Now let’s get it done.'”

Given Foxx’s Acadmeny Award for his portayal of Ray Charles in Ray, and unless there is a major reboot planned on behalf of McFarlane that includes re-casting Spawn as a non-African American Oscar winning actor, it seems safe to assume Foxx is our man.

Oh yeah, and then there is this 2011 pic from McFarlane’s WhoSay page with the caption:

“August 26, 2011 Jamie Foxx came by the office today, great guy, I drew him a quick sketch of Spawn for the road. TODD”

McFarlane continued about his mystery actor, eager to see Spawn back on the big screen.

“So he or his agents phone every week: ‘Is he done with it? Is he done?’ I have to write, produce, direct, and I keep getting distracted with other things in my life. There’s nobody to blame but myself,” he admitted last year.

McFarlane also has a prioritized plan to see Spawn return to the big screen. “The feature is still the number one priority getting that one out,” he said.

“I’ve had the story for ten years. R-rated, dark, sort of a psychological terror. It’s the world that we all know. Everything is real except for one thing. There is something moving in the shadows. Some supernatural force is moving around. And a couple of the people who think they see the shadow move aren’t in the best state of minds, so they don’t even know if its their own personal paranoia or not,” he said about the tone of the film.

“No super villain. Nothing. Just a scary creep show that you and I intellectually know to be a being called Spawn. So as I get to the 20th Anniversary, I’ll make the concentrated effort to at least get the script done. And depending on what happens there, production should come fairly quickly afterwards,” McFarlane predicted last year.

“I just want to do a gritty movie that’s sort of about our world that feels like the movie The Departed, but there’s something moving in the shadows every now and then,” he promised.

Jamie Foxx is a very in-demand actor, and we will have to see if he can move into a second comic book franchise.